LA Lakers star LeBron James revealed that he feels worse when he plays low minutes. James had suffered an ankle injury in the previous season, which ruled him out for 26 matches and he could not make an impact for his team. King James is now fit as a fiddle and he will be playing his 19th NBA season.
Meanwhile, LA Lakers coach Frank Vogel has stated that he would want James to play between 34 to 36 minutes every night in the ongoing season. Vogel also added that he wouldn’t want James to play all the 82 matches of the edition and revealed the same plans for players like Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook.
However, James, who is known to give more than 100% every time he takes the court, feels limiting workload won’t shield the body from injury. James added that he doesn’t think about injuries when he is playing.
“I don’t play the game thinking about injuries,” James said Monday, ahead of L.A.’s regular-season opener against the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday. “And I also feel worse when I play low minutes.”
James played for 33.4 minutes per game in the previous season for the Lakers. Meanwhile, the 36-year old revealed that his injury took a while to completely heal and he didn’t train for the first two months of the summer, which was a bit peculiar for him.
“It took a while,” he said. “I didn’t do much basketball stuff for probably the first two months of the summer, which is very rare for me, because my ankle wasn’t responding how I would like it to respond.
“And the best thing about the summertime was I had time. I had time to just really get ready when my ankle was ready to go. I was always training, just wasn’t on the basketball court much. Always doing other stuff, training, pushing, seeing if I could do other stuff with my ankle, and until I got to a point where I didn’t feel any sharp pains anymore, and my flexibility was back to where it was before. That’s when I knew I could get back on the floor.”
Lakers will begin their NBA campaign against Golden State Warriors on Wednesday and the team will want their veteran to be at his absolute best.
